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Show Acting Alone pa g e 435 (Every once in a while the codger would come up with an utterance as by accident that almost convinced Sam he was what he claimed to be. Unattractive is a word that real, honest-to-Pete author's reps use these days in place of the more traditional term unsympathetic in their two- or three-line discussions of the unmarketability of the characters in manuscripts they are rejecting pretty much unread, as the newer term unattractive has more pertinence in these feminized, cosmetic days of Annie and Lady Di and Nancy Reagan. Furthermore, the newer, less literary term is less likely to confuse subliterate novelizers who would otherwise torment the poor, harried agents and keep them from their -latest diet book by sending them letters asking, "Duh? Who's my hero supposed to be sympathetic to?") "As for your youth, Sammy, you never had much of a youth. None of you three boys did." "Now, wait a minute. I was rescuing my friend from a Jewkiller." Sam would actually forget the depressing literary marketplace and would start to scream inarticulately at this point, with an intensity undiminished by the fact that they'd had this conversation a dozen times before: the whole thing was on videotape, for fuck's sake; the tunnels had been wired, strictly surveilled with infra-red body-heat sensors and electric eyes and cameras; every square inch of slimy granite had been covered in the days before those tunnels were turned over by God's own garden spade to be bleached in the purifying sunlight like a colony of crisping worms. "Yes," the old man replied, "but what Mr. Wamsutter, God rest his soul, did to that nose of yours, taken in combination with his undeniably rude breach of your contractual agreement, not to mention the sweet child whose |